Research, Getting Distracted and the Demise of the Public Library System

I'm in the middle of revising my YA novel (Well, not quite in the middle --- I'm on Chapter Seven of twenty.) and found I had to make a decision regarding on how much technology I wanted in my story's setting (specifically in this particular kitchen scene). Although my novel is not set in Colonial America, I found lots of helpful information in William Chauncy Langdon's Everyday Things in American Life 1607-1776. There's also a companion volume that covers 1776-1876, which I also own. Both include great information and are also fun to read.

They're also hard to find. Your local library may have them, or then again, they may not. I bought both copies for fifty cents each at my local library's ongoing library discards sale. (If I ever find this Langdon title, I can buy one of those big-screen TVs I've been drooling over.) For more on the current state of libraries in general, check out this from John's blog.

And speaking of books, one of the more dangerous parts of selling used books is running across books that you thought you were going to sell, but decided you just can't part with. (What if I never see the book again? TRAGEDY!) So yesterday I picked up The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World's Most Astonishing Number and decided to keep rather than sell it.

Now I don't know spit about mathematics, but I figured a whole book devoted to the number phi, or 1.6180339887 and counting (not to be confused with pi, which is 3.14159 and counting. Both numbers might even have as many digits as there are Nora Roberts novels.) must be worth a look. So I read the first sentence, including a quote from British physicist Lord Kelvin:

When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.

Well, that flew all over me.

So I started reading the thing.

What can I say? I love my job. I'll get back to you in, oh, about 1.6180339887 days.